Real median income of working Americans fell for the fifth straight year

The Straight Truth About the Bush Economy

In evaluating President Bush’s recent speeches aimed at talking up the economy to the 63% of Americans who view it as either “bad,” “very bad,” or “terrible,” I would describe the different parts of his speech as “appropriate,” “unwise,” and “downright misleading.”

I think it is appropriate for the President to want to tell the 43% of the public that thinks that we are in an actual recession that we have had solid GDP and investment growth over the last couple of years. I also think it is appropriate for the President to honor our nation’s entrepreneurs, to remind people that globalization has upsides as well as downsides, and to take an optimistic tone in discussing the future.

I think it is unwise, however, to fail to acknowledge that much of the pessimism in the economy is not, as I wrote last August, a mystery we need Sherlock Holmes to solve. As Paul Krugman put it so well in his Monday column, “Americans don’t feel good about the economy because it hasn’t been good for them.”

But it’s downright misleading to ignore the economy’s weaknesses so the White House can falsely claim their fiscally reckless tax policy is an unequivocal success. When it comes to economic policy, President Bush is like the football coach with a 4-12 record who wants to tell you how his strategy has led to the four victories while pretending he has had an immaculate season. So if the President wants to claim his tax cuts have been the primary cause of our current economic performance since the end of the recession in November 2001, here are a few more economic facts he might want to consider.

WAGES

American families have consistently seen their incomes decline during the Bush Presidency—even when calculating only from the end of the last recession.